Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Ojai, California | 5th Public Talk 1945

Questioner: What is a lasting way to solve a psychological problem?

Krishnamurti: There are three stages of awareness, are there not, in any human problem? First, being aware of the cause and effect of the problem; second, being aware of its dual or contradictory process; and third, being aware of self and experiencing the thinker and his thought as one.

Take any problem that you have: for example, anger. Be aware of its cause, physiological and psychological. Anger may arise from nervous tiredness and tension; it may arise from certain conditioning of thought-feeling, from fear, from dependence or from craving for security, and so on; it may arise through bodily and emotional pain. Many of us are aware of the conflict of the opposites; but because of pain or disturbance due to conflict, we instinctively seek to be rid of it violently or in varieties of subtle ways; we are concerned with escaping from the struggle rather than with understanding it. It is this desire to be rid of the conflict that gives strength to its continuity, and so maintains contradiction; it is this desire that must be watched and understood. Yet it is difficult to be alertly passive in the conflict of duality; we condemn or justify, compare or identify; so we are ever choosing sides and thus maintaining the cause of conflict. To be choicelessly aware of the conflict of duality is arduous but it is essential if you would transcend the problem.

The modification of the outer, of the thought, is a self-protective device of the thinker; he sets his thought in a new frame which safeguards him from radical transformation. It is one of the many cunning ways of the self. Because the thinker sets himself apart from his thought, problems and conflicts continue, and the constant modification of his thought alone, without radically transforming himself merely continues illusion.

The complete integration of the thinker with his thought cannot be experienced if there is no understanding of the process of becoming and the conflict of opposites. This conflict cannot be transcended through an act of will, it can only be transcended when choice has ceased. No problem can be solved on its own plane; it can be resolved lastingly only when the thinker has ceased to become.